 Thank you very much. Thank you for the invitation to join this panel. It's a great pleasure to be here And I think We will be dealing you will be dealing over the next two days with a very important theme potential of youth in the face of the challenges and opportunities of migration and that's the potential both as actors in migration and actors on migration Now come back to that. Let me start with a Story a story by a young woman called Esther She's from Uganda When she was only 17 years old she was named Uganda's ambassador for women and girls and since then She's gone a long way She's created An organization an association called Lyft living in the face of trauma an initiative Designed to address one important dimension of forced migration in Africa It empowers university students to develop Innovative activities to create decent lives for women and girls in the world's largest refugee settlement in Uganda We were extremely happy to welcome Esther as an EU young leader to the European Development Days in Brussels 2018 and in that context she spoke at a high-level panel on women girls and migration She is also among the 42 young experts of the African Union European Union youth corporation hub Which we set up jointly with our friends and colleagues in the African Union through pilot projects She's helping to turn the recommendations and proposals from the Abidjan youth declaration and the AUE youth agenda into reality Amongst those recommendations was the call for involving young migrants in conflict prevention processes with the objective of Addressing different aspects of force force displacement For me personally Esther story highlights The instrumental contribution that youth can make when it comes to migration Now when we talk of youth, we're not actually quite clear what we're talking about There is no commonly agreed definition of youth And if you look around many organizations take a rather Generous view. I know that many for if you look at Political parties and their youth organizations. They frequently have an upper limit of 40 45 or even 50 years to be part of the youth league Whatever you might say, I know one thing for sure. I don't even qualify there But whatever the definition is When we look at youth across the world and there are more of them than there have been as the minister said They have energy They have ambitions But they don't have patience Or they shouldn't But that means that if they don't find what they want or what they need they will go looking for it elsewhere People always did people always do and will do That means that they do that within their own societies and sometimes get into trouble and therefore are marginalized or are pushed out Or they pack their bags and leave and we have forced displacement or we have Regular or irregular migration With all this in mind, we need to work on how we can focus on unlocking the potential of young people to Respond to the challenges and opportunities of their Context their surroundings and of migration It means that we have to work for youth with youth and by the youth to Address these issues and we need to give the young people more prominence in our political agendas In the European Union, we've taken important steps to make sure that issues of relevance to youth Integrated into our policies when we conceive those policies as well as into our partnerships and cooperation programs Let me give you a few recent examples In foreign policy the guiding framework document for the EU is the so-called EU global strategy on foreign and security policy That strategy specifically emphasizes the important importance of deepening work on youth in order to foster pluralism coexistence Respect and cooperation at different levels of society. It also highlights the role of youth as Actors in conflict prevention and conflict resolution to bring in different Layers of society in that work equally in the revised European consensus on development Which is our framework document for how we pursue development cooperation with partners around the world The youth dimension has been included as an essential cross-cutting theme in the new Africa-Europe alliance for sustainable investment and jobs, which was launched last year The youth dimension is a very obvious part that Alliance is all about investing in people's future So it's about giving education equipping people with skills and providing jobs where they are needed that Will help people Build their futures and the futures of their country their community their continent More of this will no doubt come in the political guidelines set out by the president designate of the Commission Mrs. Ursula from the lion she has highlighted the importance of maintaining that Like mainstream integration of the youth dimension into our policies We have to trans translate these commitments into specific policies and initiatives and we try to do so in different ways Talking of coming back to migration developing legal pathways is an essential element in any comprehensive migration policy We have in that context been looking at ways to launch a number of pilot projects for legal migration Which aim at enhancing circular migration and providing jobs and training opportunities in particular for young people and young graduates from many partner countries in that way Lithuania has offered to provide training to 50 young Nigerian professionals in the ICT sector Belgium is providing labor opportunities for a number of young Moroccans as France is also to Students and graduates from both Morocco Egypt and Tunisia Spain has launched a similar project with Moroccan students These pilot projects may still be small, but they are a way of trying to open new opportunities And they are a way of paving the way for broader support You may be aware of a European Program still on the academic side called Erasmus and Erasmus plus which supports education and training exchange schemes for youth in Europe One of the most popular programs of the European Union with literally millions of young Europeans who have participated in it over the past couple of decades What is less well known is that that program is also open to individuals and organizations from outside the EU In the context of the Africa EU Alliance or Africa Europe Alliance that I mentioned The European Commission Committed to supporting higher education scholarships through these exchanges to 35,000 African students and staff By next year by 2020 and this was a commitment commitment made in 2018 so it's over a two-year period We're well on the way We've so far Mobilized places for 26,000 so we're well on track to reach that objective of 35,000 by next year Extra funding also brings in more countries Chad Mauritania and Liberia are examples of African countries Which previously did not manage to participate in these exchanges and now do at the same time we encourage More Europeans to go the other way and more than 4,000 Europeans It should be said more senior researchers and academic staff than junior students have Taken this opportunity to spend time at African universities Within Europe we've launched a so-called youth guarantee as a commitment By the EU and his member states to ensure the young people particularly those who are vulnerable And may not find employment or staying in education receive support to bring themselves back into the mainstream We've developed skills profiles for third-country nationals to help integrate immigrants in Europe into the mainstream economy Coming back to the outside world I Refer again to to our relationship with Africa We established a few years ago In 2015 the so-called EU emergency trust Trust fund for Africa which so far has mobilized a little over four billion euro With the aim specifically to foster stability to contribute to better migration Management and to address the root courses of destabilization force displacement and the regular migration in The context of the work of that trust fund for example in the Sahel and Lake Chad region projects on youth employment and creation of economic opportunities for Over 300 million euro have already been implemented they concern countries from the Gambia in the West to Charge in the east Cameroon in the south Mauritania to the north that whole region to Support people and so far more than 22,000 people have been involved in some of these activities and have also participated in specific conflict prevention and peace-building activities in bringing them in in innovative ways into that part of work Finally a key priority for us is to protect protect migrant children regardless of who they are where they are in 2017 the EU outlined an approach for the protection of children in migration Building on previous work We want to do more to address root courses of children's irregular migration to protect them along the migratory route enable them to access adequate reception procedures With all the necessary safeguards and ultimately provide them with durable solutions and a stable future But working for youth in the way that I have described is not enough We need to work with youth as well young people don't raise issues. They can present us with the solutions The interest is not lacking When developing our youth strategy for the period up to 2027 We started a dialogue process which ultimately involved 50,000 young people from all across Europe In consultations We found out that migration and the integration of migrants emerged as one of the four priority topics that young people expected the EU to focus on over the past years and following the leadership of The EU higher representative for foreign affairs and security policy We have also developed a number of programs for encounters with young people and the inclusion of young people in our foreign policy processes all over the world Listening to young people is a necessary step to take our foreign policy agenda forward It's a necessary step to find durable solutions to Conflict situations We need to empower young people and give them the opportunities to shape the solutions to the issues that concern them a Very concrete example of this approach is the young mediterranean voices initiative launched by the higher representative in March 2017 Since then Significant number of young mediterranean people from all around the mediterranean all shores of the mediterranean have provided input analysis and ideas to help us shape policy and program design In and make new policy instruments of the EU a reality in that region So they have become de facto a kind of informal consultative body helping us take our policies in the mediterranean basin forward Migration has proven to be one of the key areas of interest of these young people Similarly on the EU EU Youth track we aim to strengthen and continue the inclusion of young people in the Africa EU partnership at all levels It was very invigorating to see young diaspora civil society representatives Participate and intervene during the last senior officials meeting for the valeta process Which took place by now about a year ago in our these of ever Youth civil society representatives are also these days taking part in civil society seminars on migration and refugee issues Which will provide the recommendations for the next a EU human rights dialogue in banjul a bit later this autumn Similarly, there's an example of how we mobilized youth voices in the G5 In the Sahel as a complement to the work that the G5 do on stabilization and security in that region Finally looking ahead The new EU strategy for youth that I mentioned foresees the establishment of a new EU youth Coordinator that will be entrusted with strengthening dialogue at all levels and in all policy areas with young people To allow them to bring their contribution to the shaping of EU policies So as the last few words, let me come back to my story about Esther Recently the African Union European Union Youth Corporation hub in which she is involved was selected among the 10 top governance initiatives which will be showcased in Paris for the next edition of the Paris Peace Forum this November Esther has a clear aspiration to give migration a human face and to provide a better future for Those who have been forced into displacement Her personal story Unmistakably proves the impactful contribution that youth can make when it comes to migration if we only allow them to unlock their potential Thank you very much. Thank you very much Christian and now I will turn to his excellent Minister Deputy Minister of Family Labor and Social Services of Turkey. I'm at Adam minister. You have the floor